[Todd]

HI All,

We have a Cardas Clear Beyond Headphone Cable available for a loaner program. Maximum number of participants limited to 5 members.

This cable is terminated for Audeze and Meze headphones with 1/4" Plug. It is 1.5 Meters (5 ft) in length.

Loaner Program Rules:

Our loaner programs are for those who would like to try the available demo item before purchasing from TTVJAudio. These products are purchased by us and belong to TTVJAudio.com. It is our hope that through hearing these cables in your own environment in your own system, you can make a decision on whether or not to add it to your system. And if you decide to purchase, TTVJAudio.com will be your destination for your acquisition.

How to sign up! Pay attention and make sure you supply all the info in your email - and have fun listening!

Send your name and address, telephone number and your Head-Fi user name to me (Todd) at todd@ttvjaudio.com. Do NOT PM me as you will not be included in the program without an email.

You will get the loaner for 1 week to use in your home with your system. After your one week is up, you must send it to the next loaner participant. Email me (todd@ttvjaudio.com) the tracking info so I can pass it on to the recipient.

You MUST write a review and post it in this loaner thread. It must be posted in the same thread as this announcement for the loaner program. Please post the review here first and feel free to post it somewhere else if you like!

Once you have received the loaner, email me to let me know you have it and I will send the address for the next person.

Our loaner programs are USA only. We are restricted from shipping/selling outside the USA on most products.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Todd

 

[audionewbi]

I love to own and IEM cable from Cardas, I emailed Cardas audio over a half a dozen times during the last 4-5 years, and not even once I got a response back, which was truly disappointing.

I try my luck here hoping it might get some notice.

 

[Todd]

Hi audionewbi,

I answer all of my emails. I must not have received it or you would have received a response. I would not have ignored or blown off any inquiry into any of the products I sell. email me at todd@ttvjaudio.com and I will search my email to see if I indeed missed your emails. I apologize if I had!!!

Todd

 

[audionewbi]

Hi audionewbi,

I answer all of my emails. I must not have received it or you would have received a response. I would not have ignored or blown off any inquiry into any of the products I sell. email me at todd@ttvjaudio.com and I will search my email to see if I indeed missed your emails. I apologize if I had!!!

Todd

Sorry Todd, I was not directing at you, but at Cardas audio. I've had three email interaction with you and it all has been nothing but positive.

Thank you.

 

[kckfor]

Is this still available?

 

[Todd]

Yes, so far no one has signed up.... still open for 5 participants or less.

Todd

 

[kckfor]

Thanks vi emailed you.

 

[Todd]

So far we have had 1 person sign up for the Cardas Clear Beyond Headphone cable and that is kckfor. We will be sending the cable out on Wednesday to you.

Just to be clear, we only have one of these cables and it is terminated as stated in the description in the fir post of this thread. I cannot get any other terminations for loan at this time. This is what we have to offer...

Todd

 

[kckfor]

Thank you. Actually, I just got rid of my Elite’s and won’t be able to use those terminations any more. Thanks anyway.

 

[sahmen]

So no 4-pin XLR or 4.4mm balanced amplifier terminations? By the way, is this loaner program still available?

 

[Todd]

Yes, The loaner program is still available. I could only get one cable (I have to pay for it!) and elected to get the 1/4 so it would work in most home headphone amplifiers.

If you want in, email me your info and we will get it out to you.

Todd

 

[Top Hat]

I have a lot of thoughts on audio cables, and Cardas cables specifically, so I’ll go on for a while, but if you’re looking for a TL;DR impression of this 5 ft silver/copper hybrid headphone cable:
It sounds fantastic. Cardas is truly unique amongst cable makers. And I swear it sounds at least half a db louder than my other cables. Not sure how that’s possible, but pretty interesting.

So to go more in depth:

I joined Head-Fi in 2006 after trying on some bose headphones in an Apple Store, then looking them up on Amazon and seeing a review that said “these are overpriced crap! You can get something like Senneheiser or Grado’s that are twice as good for half the price!” so I started doing some research, ended up at head-fi.org, and I was hooked. Got some SR-225’s not long after, with a GoVibe v5 amp, with a 4” Turbo Diabolous IV ⅛” cable to connect to my computer and iPod. This was my freshman year of college and my roommate was quite understanding as I’d leave a long playlist of songs and pink noise running on loop, with the headphones in a drawer, just to break them in.

Years later, I work as a mastering engineer and I spend a lot of time with audio gear. My main headphones are the Audeze LCD-X 2021 update, and I listen to them through my RME ADI-2 Pro FS R DAC/amp. I do use them more for work than pleasure, but work is often a pleasure. I listen to a lot of music very closely on these headphones.

When I bought the Audeze’s I decided I wanted a nice cable to match, so I ordered a silver/copper hybrid cable from Impact Audio. I got it 5 feet long because that’s the perfect length at my work station. It cost $270 and I quickly got to comparing it to the stock cable when it arrived.

It’s difficult to compare headphones cables, as I mostly find myself fumbling when attaching/detaching the mini-xlr from the Audeze’s, so the position on your head changes a bit. And anyone in this forum is probably aware that the position of the cans on your head shifts the frequency response you’ll hear. I think especially in Audeze’s whose famous bass response is dependent on the seal around your ear.

I never did a blind test, but I did decide that I prefer my new cable. It’s not a major difference – highs sparkle a little more, details feel slightly clearer, sometimes bass a little tighter – but I also really prefer its length (5ft vs 6) and its texture and look. I don’t think it will make me a better mastering engineer, but I like that I went all the way with my headphone investment.

I later learn about Cardas cables and I’m intrigued. I start doing A LOT of research into audio cables online. It seems like length and capacitance are the variables most attached to frequency attenuation. So for headphones, length and capacitance aren’t major issues in the first place. I find one website with several essays and investigations all dedicated to de-bunking claims from high-end cable makers. And I keep finding this information about how most claims from makers of expensive cables are measurable, but not within the human range of hearing, and some things aren’t even measurable. But within the same youtube video of someone, quite scientifically, explaining how cables shouldn’t make a perceivable difference to the listener, the same person insists they hear differences.

And it is definitely true that our ability to measure things is limited. And it’s also true that things outside our range of hearing can still affect what we do hear. For example, a low frequency oscillator can run below 20hz and affect tones above 20hz. Or in the case of high resolution audio, while our ears won’t hear what’s happening above 20khz (or 17 or 18k for most adults), they can hear the effect of the low pass filter employed within the converter. Aliasing in digital files doesn’t just occur where audio meets the LPF at it’s top range, but it is bounced back into lower frequencies.

And one thing I noticed in researching cables: NO ONE REVIEWS CARDAS. Not a single de-bunker measures Cardas cables or talks about their unique patent from 1986.

I looked up their patent and read it. It’s only about 5 pages long with one diagram. It’s pretty interesting. It walks you through what George Cardas believes to be occurring in cables, and how he is addressing it.

As I understood it, the idea is that an electrical signal will choose the path of least resistance when traveling through a conductor. So if that path becomes overloaded, signal will spill off into less ideal strands within the conductor. He solves this by insulating various sized conductors within one cable, allowing the signal to travel through without the potential compromise.

It reminded me of how a 3-way (or more) speaker splits a signal, each driver taking responsibility for a certain range of frequencies. Obviously not the same thing (there are no crossovers built into the cable, etc.) but works with the same principle of fidelity being added when a full frequency range is handled by different size conductors/drivers. I also like how, in the language of the patent, George acknowledges that he doesn’t entirely understand how it all works:

“ The cable with its multiple individual strands is employed as a single conductor. A signal is addressed simultaneously to all of the individual conductors at the input end of the cable, and the signal is extracted from all of the individual conductors at the output end of the cable. By some mechanism which is not completely understood at this time, the signal appears to choose the path of least resistance, as it were, in selecting the class of individual cable sizes which is optimal for the transmission of that particular signal in terms of its frequency, voltage and/or current. Insulation of the individual conductive strands ensures that the signal will remain within the most efficient size of cable until it is delivered to the output end of the cable. “

Personally, I’m much more likely to trust someone who knows how to acknowledge the limits of their understanding. And this is all to say that Cardas clearly has something unique going into their cable design.

The first time I got to hear one of their cables was a 10 ft. Parsec cable attached to Sennheiser hd650s (my go-to cans for about 8 years). On a quick first listen it sounded the same as stock to me, no obvious difference. Then on another day I sat down to listen intentionally, and consistently I heard extended bass and something different going on in the high end. To me it felt a little warmer and less hyped in the high mids. Depended on the material I put on.

I had another mastering engineer friend listen to the cable. He also has lots of experience with hd650s, and before I told him what I heard, I asked him to tell me what he heard. He heard the same low end extension, and he described the high mids as having extra harmonics that reminded him of listening to tube gear. He loved it.

We both heard nearly the same thing and wondered how a cable could make this happen. What is physically happening inside the cable? All the de-bunkers insist that an adequate copper cable will transmit a basically perfect signal, so how do you improve on this? How do you potentially even create extra content within a cable? I swear music sounds at least half a db louder when I plug in the Clear Beyond headphone cable. And when I’d switch back to my cable I’d have to turn up to match volume. And volume matching is something I do constantly while mastering, so I’m particularly sensitive to this.

I’ve been working on better understanding the physics going on within my electronics, so this was really throwing me for a loop.

When the opportunity to listen to Cardas’s latest cable, a cable that is more than double the price of their previous most expensive cable, which already was the world’s most expensive headphone cable, I had to jump on it. What a privilege to be able to hear their latest innovation.

When I first plugged it in and opened up my reference playlist I just thought, “Wow this sounds amazing. Have I just not appreciated my headphone rig lately?”

When I more intentionally sat down to compare this 5 ft $1900 silver/copper hybrid cable with my 5ft $270 silver/copper hybrid cable, against the 6 ft stock copper cable…the Cardas cable always sounded best.

I had my mastering engineer friend come over again, he listened to all 3 cables and felt the same. Said the Cardas Clear Beyond sounded like the nicest studios he’s had the privilege of spending time in. Everything more cleanly separated and finely detailed, he felt it was night and day difference from the stock cable.

And we both wondered how the dual-mono cable functions. We both love using dual-mono compression in our projects, so we have familiarity with how dual-mono vs. stereo treatment sounds. And I rarely used the crossfeed feature in my RME dac, but I found myself really enjoying it via the Cardas Clear Beyond.

It’s all pretty fascinating to me, to hear something going on but not understand quite how it’s working. I’m impressed by Cardas’s commitment to perfecting a thing that others said was already perfect. As my favorite musician Sun Ra says, “The possible has been tried and failed. Now it’s time to try the impossible.”I’m all for pushing at the limits of knowledge and possibility.

Though I should say that there are things about Cardas that bother me, like their premium USB cables (I’m 95% confident that their cable technology does not apply to the transfer of digital signals), and the markup on their basic ⅛” to ¼” adapters which don’t advertise any special technology, yet cost over triple of other seemingly identical adapters. I guess they’re American made? I just think they have a pretty special and unique approach to their products that they clearly put a lot of pride into, so things that feel like easy mark-ups make it feel like the other products are just marked up as well. But, what do I know about running their business.

And all this love for the cable being stated, it mostly makes me want to hear what their Clear cable sounds like, and the Reflection, both of which have the very unique dual-mono characteristic. I guess you could say that I was quite impressed by the sound of the Parsec cable when I tried it on my hd650s, and I was also impressed when I tried the Clear Beyond on my Audezes. But I wasn’t, y’know, 10x more impressed. I’m not personally in the financial position to feel good about spending $1900 on a cable that DOES sound better, but not in a way I couldn’t live without.

But it has got me to seriously consider their $430 5ft. Clear Reflection cable. Feels like a deal in comparison!

 

[Ragnar-BY]

@Top Hat well written! It's so nice to read a review in which the author really evaluates what he heard, instead of adjusting reality to fit his experience.

 

[Donald D]

I got my Cardas Clear Beyond headphone cable yesterday for the Focal Utopia 2022 to use it with the balanced signal of the Violectric V590 Mk2 PRO. The Violectric DACs used to be bad but since the V380 Mk2 and the V590 Mk2 they use a new DAC. There is a review of the V380 Mk2 by Ichos. I will post my impressions later. It's totally different sounding on that setup than the balanced stock cable and there is a striking difference between the two.

 

[whitedragem]

erm....

1,2,3,4,5....

nope.. unless I skipped a few pages,.. we never even got FIVE... (dang?!)

I bought some CARDAS ear monitors simply due to the cable they used (and materials and philosophy put into practice with that part).

like some of the best speakers being 'one way' designs.. those IEMs felt very easy to live with (would still be my bedtime gotos if I hadn't accidentally folded the metal grill that stops my ear wax getting into the driver chamber).. (the grill seems magnetic and isn't as attached as previously and I certainly don't want that little grill falling into my ear canal, so I stopped using those PERFECT bedtime IEMs).

My child uses Meze 99s and I have a pair of Sony MDR Z7 that sound congested and 'smeared' vs the ALO cabled Edition 5 Ultrasones, (and other 'high end' headphones that have ran through my better head rigs...)

Sadly the Sony don't command a cable upgrade as I just don't trust they will scale up well enough to get air time vs my nicer cans' (but I bet they have some headroom to improve)..
I actually nabbed some Focal Clear openbacks for the two sets of included 'cloth wrapped' cables (perfect for VR gaming (length and toughness), and had hoped would work with the Meze99, but 'too thick at the adapter end' to insert into those beautifullywooden cups.. )

I have tuned and tweaked with cables and found success with some nice pricepoints that I can afford..
My biggest regret was returning a preloved Nordost biwire cable, in the nineties, when running a combo NAD3020 (mids and highs) & Rotel RB850 (bass drivers) bi amp setup. (the previous owner had put a thumbtack THROUGH the cable !)

I trust Cardas due to my experience with the EarSpeakers.
The Cardas EarSpeakers no doubt sounded extra phenominal due to the use of the hardwaired Cardas cable, so, next to Nordost, has always been 'top of my tree' when considering cable options.
As a champagne taste/beer budget audiofool; ALO cables have been my apex/zenith for awhile now. (although some IEMs have had reasonable sets of 'wire' included in the box, and is often a large factor to me when justifying their pricepoints)..

I gather, being in Australia, and being late to this party, that these loaners might not be an option...?

I certainly would be happy to write some words with regards to my experience, and whilst the Sony MDR Z7 isn't the most 'high end' (/top of the tree) kit around, I totally believe they ARE being held back (and it isn't amplification!)

I'd probably use an HDVD800 (sennheiser amp) and an AudioGd R28 as amplifiers for the review project, but truly believe my childs' take on the cable swap (into the Mezes) would prove the most interesting to write up.. (specifically due to the genres covered that would go from Tori Amos to Tool (and back again))..

The use case for a cable that can be used on the Focal Clear AND the Meze99 would prove a viable purchase project to wind up a rig.. (If I bought a set, the Meze family would be where they'd likely live) (unless the Focal Clear actually started to sound great; which I don't have much faith in as, to be honest, with 600-800 hours on them, (off head 'break in') they are 'junk-fi' to me vs my present go to parts.. (I'd love a nice Nordost for the Ed5 and a nice Cardas for some AKZero1 in ear monitors..)

Due to my general 'beer budget' attitude (and patience) I do believe I'd be buying a 'fairly entry level' Cardas part and simply 'walk on' knowing "done"!

With regards to reviewing, I'd probably be identifying sound stage SIZE, and most likely put most weighting onto front stage extension as those traits seem to be the hardest to render (ie transport and DAC and cable quality (digital and analogue)) required to really get things showing their utmost)
TJ Eckleberg - Inches of Darkness, and Dire Straits - Private Investigations being some fave 'soundfield test tracks' (if a phase shifting guitar can rip through airspace viscerally, then, "I'm in").


That TJ Eckleberg track is awesome for stage setup check as the 'drummer' at the start of the track can be placed accurately and used as a test in many rooms to make sure the setup is 'natural'. (ie for home 'hifi' rigs, the drummer is 20-30foot back in the stage via a 'surround amp' and nearly fifty feet back via cost effective stereo amps ... with nice R2R DACs into valve hybrids integrated or pre/power combos and 'tuned rooms' easily pushing 70ft of front stage depth. Is actually a good track for 'seeing' how much a reequalisation process might 'kill the nuanced' echo details that give dimensionality. (last week I put an Anthem ARC capable processor after an AudioGd R28 and 'before' a Musical Fidelity M3 (integrated) amp... a room re-equalised netted some audio characteristics that were desirable in the resultant sound, sure,.. but loosing so much stage depth due to ADC/(re-eq)/DAC processing did make the 'perfect' sound seem very choked.

Vanessa Maes' Butterfly Concherto is a good one for low and high level detail and stage setup, so would likely be the three 'talk pieces' to make an article..

Cardas into mid tier 'affordable' head-fi?
might not be the typical 'spend 10% budget on cabling' price point that system builders have used as a rule for decades, but, given the sound improvements (possibly) netted, is still cheaper than 'upgrade-itis', or further sidegrading.. (the Focal Clears were a big misstep for me, but again, and apologies for the longwinded post, were bought for the cables they came with... )

Any person who can disengage their rational mind and follow their intuition and/or 'trust' their higher self, has my full attention.
The Cardas EarSpeakers are the best dang bedtime IEM I've ever owned.
Cardas have something magic going on (true),.. not being able to put a theory into words, but besting words and putting a theory into practice makes George a bit of a legend in my eyes....

I always like the notion espoused by YoGabbaGabba: "Try it, You May Like It!!"

(not actually asking to try these as I fall short on various fronts, not least of which seems to be termination and 'location'(location, location; that point being big enough to write THREE TIMES).

I do however love to discuss cables and their relevancy to the total 'sum of parts'..